With increasing needs for storage of data, storage area networks (SANs) have become a widely accepted solution for storing huge amount of data associated with a network of host devices. In a SAN, a multi-protocol switch connects host devices such as data servers to storage databases in a storage area network. In a multi-protocol SAN scenario, the data servers access different storage databases using the multi-protocol switch for frame retransmission and I/O operations. When multiple applications associated with the data servers try to access a single port associated with a storage database, the port may experience performance degradation due to heavy traffic. The performance degradation is due to the frame drop loss or frame transmission delay due to heavy traffic on the port of the multi-protocol switch. This becomes serious when critical application is operational and trying to perform the I/O operation on the port.
Additionally, in the multi-protocol switch, there is difference in protocol frame speed, bit error rate, frame flow order, frame conversion time that influences the performance of the port.
Further, port load condition, state of infrastructure (different protocols support connection interfaces through which the databases (SAN devices) are connected to the multi-protocol switch) further aggravates port performance of the multi-protocol switch.
In view of the above, it would be desirable to have the multi-protocol switch that ranks ports based on performance of those ports and notifies when the performance of the port changes.